


the origin of symmetry

by uselessphillie



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Legos, Phil Needs a Hug, Platonic Relationships, another muse title fight me irl about it, but i read some pretty fucked up stuff while researching for this so here we are anyway, ft. dan as a dramatic seven year old, i feel like i shouldn't need to tag that, kid!phan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-16 19:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15443832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uselessphillie/pseuds/uselessphillie
Summary: Dan's got a meticulous building technique, Phil's got a wild imagination - the perfect combination for taking over the world, one Lego at a time.





	the origin of symmetry

“Hi Mrs. Lester,” Dan greets Phil’s mum with his best _talking-to adults_ voice. His own mum has a firm grip on his shoulder, preventing him from running into the house. He fidgets as the two women make small talk on the doorstep, shifting the pillowcase full of Lego bricks from one hand to the other.

Dan, at the tender age of seven, is not a very patient child. “Mum, can I go, _please?”_ He wriggles out from under her grasp, inching towards the door.

He doesn’t quite make it and is instead pulled back into her arms, drops his plastic brick bounty in favor of succumbing to the hug. “On you best behavior for Mr. and Mrs. Lester, yes Daniel?” she says, pulling back to look him square in the eyes.

“Yes, mum,” he replies. He huffs as she tidies his fringe, still not releasing him. “Mum, come on!”

Behind him, Phil’s mum says, “He’s never any trouble, don’t worry,” which feels like a triumph. Dan can (usually) count on her to be on his side.

After another eternity of fringe-tidying, Dan is _finally_ allowed to go inside. He drags the heavy pillowcase through the hall and down the stairs to the playroom, which makes a truly absurd amount of noise. Phil appears at the bottom of the stairs before Dan’s even made it halfway, reaching up to help him with the bag.

“Woah, how much Lego do you _have_ in here, Dan?” Phil’s eyes are wide as he looks inside, to the seemingly unending rainbow of squares and rectangles.

“I told you I was gonna bring everything I had! Even the ones I took from school.”

“Dan! You took Legos from school? You can’t just steal like that, it’s against the rules!” Phil looks torn about whether or not to tell their teacher about Dan’s pilfering habit come Monday morning.

Dan shrugs, unbothered by his best friend’s goody-two-shoes ways. This is their third year in school together, so he’s used to it by now. Phil would never _actually_ tell on him. “I always leave them in my pockets by accident,” he says. It’s not quite true, but he doesn’t want Phil to be mad at him right now. Not when they’ve got a plan to execute.

“C’mon Philly, let’s get to work, or else we’ll never finish this thing.”

***

Dan, having recently mastered the art of overlapping the bricks so as to keep them more firmly in place, had just last week set about creating what he considered to be the ultimate Lego feat - a perfect cube. Phil, sat next to him on the classroom floor at recess, had frowned and said _that’s so boring, Dan. Why would you build a cube when you could build literally anything you wanted?_

Dan, having also recently learned what the word _symmetry_ meant, used this to confuse Phil and get him to leave him alone. Phil would understand once he saw it.

It took quite a bit longer than he’d have liked, what with Phil’s constant pestering causing him to lay too many bricks in a line instead of interlocking them. Whole sections would break off, and he’d have to pry a bunch of bricks off the base and start again. But eventually he’d done it, had set it down gently on Phil’s desk during their next recess and plucked a crisp out of Phil’s hand while he stared. Phil had picked it up and started turning it over in his hands, which made Dan extremely nervous. Phil was always dropping things and breaking them.

Phil said, “I have a ton more Legos at my house we could use,” which made no sense.

“Use for what?” Dan asked, now with the entire bag of Phil’s crisps in his hands. His mum never bought the pickled onion Space Raiders.

Phil shot him an annoyed look, the same one he uses when Dan asks to copy his subtraction homework (which Phil always says yes to, somehow).

“To make it bigger, obviously,” Phil had said, setting the cube back down none too gently. Dan winced as it hit the desk. “Or taller - yeah, definitely taller. Like a building! The really huge ones, what are they called? Like in cities?”

Dan frowned. “A skyscraper? But it wouldn’t have any windows, Phil, how is that a skyscraper?”

Phil rolled his eyes as if that was a totally irrelevant detail. “I don’t know, it’s like one of those future ones, one that’s all glass!”

There had been more, Phil with his feet tucked up under him, gesturing wildly with his hands, sat at his tiny school desk creating an entire universe out a cube.

Dan, always running low on excuses in the face of his friend’s overwhelming enthusiasm, had said, “But then it won’t be symmetrical anymore, Phil.”

(It’s possible that he doesn’t quite fully understand what symmetry is yet.)

Phil had snatched the very last Space Raider out his hand and said _I’ll ask my mum if you can sleep over on Saturday,_ without bothering to ask Dan if he wanted to.

(He wanted to.)

***

They’d been working every day after school this week, until Dan had to go home for dinner each night. Phil has hidden the tower (which is tall enough to reach their chests, now, and quite heavy) in the back of the playroom’s closet, away from Martyn’s destructive hands. With Phil’s Lego supply exhausted, all that’s left is the contents of Dan’s pillowcase. They’ll _definitely_ finish tonight.

While Dan makes sure the tower is intact, Phil dumps the pillowcase out onto the carpet in a messy tumble. The noise of plastic on plastic, hundreds and hundreds of pieces, is almost deafening. Dan whirls around, hands over his ears and a reprimand on his lips.

 _“Phiiiiiiiil!_ Why did you do that? _”_ Dan surveys the absolute disaster of bricks. The ugly pink playroom carpet is a distant memory, lost under a sea of bright red, yellow, and blue. This is  not symmetrical (or at least he’s pretty sure it isn’t).

Phil looks so immediately guilty, clutching the empty pillowcase to his chest, that Dan almost regrets getting angry. Almost.

“Sorry! I’m sorry. I just thought it would make it easier to look for the right pieces.” Phil takes a couple tentative steps into his space, hands fluttering around Dan’s shoulders as though he’s not sure if Dan would allow himself to be hugged right now. Dan sighs dramatically, succumbing to his second hug of the day before digging his fingers into Phil’s ticklish sides. Phil squirms away from him, his shriek dissolving into giggles that Dan can’t help but join in on. He kicks at a couple bricks at the edge of the pile with his bare feet, anger already forgotten.

***

Dan does most of the building. Phil has proved pretty useless at the critical interlocking technique, despite Dan’s careful instruction, so he’d been relegated to sorting through the pieces for the necessary sizes. Phil keeps up a near-constant stream of chatter as he searches for some more 2x4 bricks, and for once Dan doesn’t mind. He’s in a rhythm now, an all-encompassing, skyscraper-producing rhythm.

Plus, he likes when Phil talks to him. Most of the other kids only talk about him.

When he can’t reach the top of the tower anyone, even standing on his tiptoes, he’s forced to interrupt Phil’s monologue about _hey Dan, did you know that tigers have striped skin, not just their fur, and -_

“I can’t reach any higher,” Dan says.

Phil looks up at him from the middle of the Lego pile, blinking away his haze of animal facts. He gets to his feet, bricks raining down as they escape the crevices of his t-shirt. “Oh. Maybe we could get a chair from upstairs?”

“No way, if your mum sees us up there, she’ll make us go outside or something.” Dan wrinkles his nose at the thought. “And then we’ll never finish. I’ll just put a couple of layers together down here, and then you can boost me up.”

Phil looks horrified at that idea. “What? I can’t do that, I’ll drop you!”

Dan has already started working on the new layers. “Yes you can, remember when you threw our ball into Mr. Harrison’s garden by accident? You lifted me over the fence then, right?”

Phil seems unsure, but pushes the pile of 2x4’s towards him anyway. “I guess. I just don’t want you to get hurt...”

“I won’t,” Dan says, slotting the last brick into place. “I trust you, Philly, c’mon.”

Phil sighs, but moves to kneel down with his back to the tower. He holds his hands out, making a little platform. Dan steps onto it, holding onto the tower with one hand for balance.

“Your feet are cold,” Phil says. His voice sounds strained with the effort of holding Dan up.

Dan places the new layers on the tower, trying to use his stupid right hand to lock it onto the ones below. “Your mum’s cold,” he mumbles, just as one too-hard push sends his body careening to the side. His feet tip awkwardly out of Phil’s hands, causing him to stumble and fall onto the carpet.

Except it’s not carpet, it’s a sea of sharp plastic.

His bare feet are the first victims as he fails to catch himself, followed closely by the palms of his hands as well as his forearms. He curls in on himself as he lays there on the ground, but it only causes more sharp edges to dig into his shoulders and knees.

“Dan! Dan, oh no, oh my god, I told you you would fall! Are you okay? I don’t know what to - ” Phil breaks off as Dan starts crying, the sharp stabs of pain too much for his little body. He hears Phil thundering up the stairs, his voice sounding far away and panicky. “Mum! Mum, I need help!”

By the time Phil reappears with Mrs. Lester in tow, Dan has managed to sit up and start examining the many Lego-shaped indents in his skin. He swipes frustratedly at the wetness on his cheeks. He hates crying.

Phil’s mum wrenches her hand out of Phil’s death grip. “Daniel, love, what’s happened? Phil said you took quite a tumble.” She takes one of his hands in her own, frowning at the already-fading marks.

“I’m fine,” Dan starts, still sniffling. “I was - ”

“It was my fault.” Phil’s voice is small and scared. “I dumped the Legos out everywhere, and then my hands slipped when I was holding Dan up, and then - and then - ” Phil looks like he’s about to cry. That’s not okay. Dan hates crying, but he hates it even more when Phil’s crying.

“Hey Philly, don’t cry, it’s alright, I’m alright,” Dan says, ignoring his lingering pain in favor of wrapping an arm around Phil’s shoulders. Three hugs in one day, that has to be a new record for him.

Phil sniffles into his shoulder. “I promise I’ll be better next time, Danny.”

Dan rolls his eyes. And people think _he’s_ the dramatic one. “You don’t have to be better, Phil. I like you just the way you are.”

***

Phil’s mum does make them to go outside for a bit, but not before bringing a chair from the dining room and holding onto Dan as he places the final pieces on the top of the tower. She even helps them carry it up the stairs into Phil’s bedroom, where it towers proudly over the rest of his toys. Together, he and Phil scoop the remaining scattered Lego pieces back into the pillowcase.

Tired from their forced escapades outside (which turned out to be pretty fun, in the end), the two boys pull all of Phil’s blankets and pillows onto the floor so that they can sleep under the shadow of their skyscraper. Dan stares up at it, bright colors shining even in the late-night darkness. After all that work, it’s just kind of...a long cube. It doesn’t feel as magnificent as he’d imagined it. But then again, he’s never had much of an imagination.

He says as much to Phil, buried in a mound of blankets somewhere to his left. “It was kind of a stupid idea, huh?” Dan says.  

Phil digs his toes into Dan’s shin. “What are you talking about? It’s not stupid. We _made_ it, like, out of nothing. That’s not stupid.”

This, rather predictably, sets Phil’s much more active imagination alight. Dan closes his eyes, listens to his best friend spin entire universes out of the darkness. He dreams about cities made of glass and Phil giving him a boost up above them and into space, holding him tightly so he’ll never fall.                                                                                                                                                                                                          

**Author's Note:**

> my brother and i attempted to do this kind of build once when we were kids. it was not nearly as successful as dan and phil's is here. he has since abandoned his lego roots and now works in quality assurance for k'nex, the fucking traitor.
> 
> i'm a bit nervous to post this one, since it's different from what i normally write. your thoughts on it, as always, would be greatly appreciated x
> 
> reblog on tumblr [here](https://uselessphillie.tumblr.com/post/176318566620/fic-the-origin-of-symmetry) xx


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